Photo Warehouse Ultrafine Transparency

Has anyone tried using these to make digital negatives for pd/pt or other alt processes?

If you buy the 100 pack of 11x17 you can cut it down for 8.5x11 and get your cost down to $0.38/8.5x11 or $0.76/11x17 as opposed to Pictorico at $1.20/8.5x11 or $2.40/11x17. That kind of savings will add up very quickly.

I was going to order a 20 count package of 8.5x11, but the minimum order is $35 and before I commit that much to a test I thought I would check and see if anyone else has had any success.

I just took a palladium workshop with Clay Harmon (will make another post about that this evening) which has me hooked.

I'm thinking that even if this stuff wouldn't work for palladium it would do just fine for cyanotypes so I may just go ahead and order it later this week. I am hoping to build my UV box in the next 2 weeks or so.

Photo Warehouse also sells a couple of other neat items such as window clings (make your own car window stickers!) and tshirt transfers (I wear these on special occasions like b-days as a gag) so that I can fill out my order with items I know I can use.

I received a package of 8x10 and 11x17 photo warehouse film a little while ago, but I am waiting on the pictorico that I bought from Brian to get here. I figure the best way to see how comparable they are is to print the same image one after the other onto each and see what they look like. I will report back here the outcome. Once my UV box is finished (maybe tonight if I have the time!) and my chemicals are in I will make prints from each negative to see if the substrate affects the UV transmission and by how much.

I printed 2 cyanotypes yesterday. One with a previously made pictorico negative for palladium printing and a linear step tablet (no currection curve) on the ultrafine. Both images were placed in the same contact frame and printed at the same time (2 8x11.5 in pictures in one 16x20" frame) A couple of observations:

1. the palladium curved I had used previously on the pictorico really sucks for cyanotypes

2. the pictorico is a thicker substrate than the ultrafine which leads me to believe that the ultrafine may print sharper as it is thinner (this makes sense to me, but I have no hard proof).

3. I could see no quality difference between the two prints based on the films used. They both created an image and neither inhibited the process.

4. They printed at about the same speed judging from the color under the clear film outside of the image.

5. I needed to bring the images inside sooner, but this has nothing to do with either of the films. I wasn't sure what the color was supposed to stop so I left them out there about twice as long as needed and bleached my images out. I did get a very nice linear scale from the step tablet without a correction curve, though I did use a colorized negative (my own color formulation).

6. I think I coated on the wrong side of the paper--stonehenge rising.

I will be trying this again today with the step-tablet and leaving it outside less to try to get a deeper blue. I will report back when they're done. Also, if anyone would like some info about the process I used for my negs let me know. On the ultrafine a black negative, Burkholder's 0:55:55:0 colorized was grainy, and Keith Schreiber's 0:45:100:51 were all too grainy looking. I am using a Canon S9000 so choosing Schreiber's brown color and printing did not give me a green negative, but a brown one just like on the screen. Damn Canon for giving us good print drivers! So I took the image he had uploaded on his website of the scanned green negative, saved it, took a color sample from the outside edge, and used that for my color index. When printed I had the same green negs that I have on the pictorico from Clay Harmon's Epson 1280.

Jeremy, why green? why not orange or red? they have more UV absorbtion and might help you control the exposure better. I saw one of Dan`s orange negatives and they are very subtle, you would need less ink and less density to get the same results as a "normal" ink jet negative.

You would think that, but the green negs on the 1280 absorb more UV light than the orange negs. I have a UV densitometer, and I didn't believe it until I tested it myself. The green negs, IMHO, are FAR superior to the orange negs. I've done both, and now use the 'fake pyro' exclusively. Apparently the dyes have a lot more absorption than color alone would indicate.

Last edited by clay; 06-20-2004 at 04:39 PM. Click to view previous post history.

You would think that, but the green negs on the 1280 absorb more UV light than the orange negs. I have a UV densitometer, and I didn't believe it until I tested it myself. The green negs, IMHO, are FAR superior to the orange negs. I've done both, and now use the 'fake pyro' exclusively. Apparently the dyes have a lot more absorption that color alone would indicate.

Ah! must be something in the chemistry of the dyes or pigments.....learn something every day...